In all the man-versus-python stories, the snake is almost always the coldblooded antagonist.

Reticulated pythons like the ones involved in two attacks in Indonesia this year are among the world's longest and strongest. They kill by coiling around their prey and squeezing until its heart stops. Then the serpents swallow their victims whole.

It's certainly the stuff of villains. Even when the end result isn't death, the attacks often make international headlines.

But scientists and snake lovers say the strikes may be more than just alarming stories about reptilian foes. They may be the indirect result of our global food chain's insatiable desire for an inexpensive product.

The latest snake attack victim was Robert Nababan, according to Metro.co.uk. On September 30, he was riding his moped home from his security job at an oil palm tree farm in Indonesia when he came across a gigantic python lying across the road - and tried to move it.

Accounts diverge from there. Some say he was simply trying to clear the road; others say he was trying to capture the snake.

What happened next is not in dispute: The python latched onto his arm and began to coil, the reports say. At some point, it also bit his head. He was able to dislodge the animal, possibly with a machete, but not before he was seriously injured.

He was rushed to a hospital where doctors treated him. His snake attack story rocketed around the globe.

He survived, unlike a python attack victim in Indonesia earlier this year. Villagers on the island of Sulawesi went searching for a man who never returned from a palm oil fruit harvest in March. Instead, they found scattered pieces of fruit, a picking tool, a boot and a 23-foot-long python, swollen from a recent meal.

When they sliced the snake open, they found the missing man, dead and covered in reptilian digestive juices.article...